


and if we must live, sweetheart

by prusfockers



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 11:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12886683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prusfockers/pseuds/prusfockers
Summary: Nowadays Daryl is built of metal.





	and if we must live, sweetheart

**Author's Note:**

> This one kinda follows the rhythm of "be a riot", but an apocalytic version. If you have not read the other, feel free to make an angst combo afterwards.
> 
> English is not my first language, so if you find something off, please let me know. This story is not beta'd and I can only do so much. Again, shout if you find something horrible.

**and if we must live, sweetheart**

* * *

* * *

 

At the exact moment they meet each other, Daryl is built in flesh and bones.

He’s hungry, a little thirsty, and fucking mad at the end of the world because the idea of actual food is just impossible right now. And eating a large amount of it, pfft. But most of all, he’s _so_ goddamn angry - he’s been hunting that deer for days, and that fucker is being shredded apart in front of him.

He needs to eat, though. The group needs to eat and no matter if he likes them or not, everybody has a role to play in their makeshift parody of community. He knows it’s too risky to eat the part not touched by the son of a bitch sent from hell, but it's worth the shot. So he looks up to ask and-

Hmm. Well.

\- whoever the man is, he’s just a damn beauty. Maybe because he's clean, both clothes and skin. It’s a rare occurrence these days. Or maybe it's the way he rests his hands on his hips. Everything screams pig to him in Merle's voice, precisely, but after twenty-three seconds of them staring each other, he can tell already that whoever he is, he’s not the Shane kind of pig.

Shit.

Daryl goes looking for Merle instead, break the weird eye-contact (because what it is, right? Weird. He never looks people in the eyes, too much stuff they can see on his). He doesn't have a good, big deer. He does have a bunch of squirrels, tho, and could use some help on skinning them.

But his brother is not there.

Nah, Merle is left alone on a rooftop in the middle of an infested city. And turns out the man is just a dumb cowboy who spent three minutes with his brother and decided that Merle doesn't work well with others.

Color him fucking surprised.

(He knows, he knows it's true. But it’s Merle. His brother. And-)

And in the next breath, Daryl’s suddenly built in range and blind hurt. He has a gun pointed at his head, then he’s being held down by a chokehold. Maybe it doesn't even happen in this order. He screams anyway, and thrashes and curses and fuck them all, they just don't fucking get it.

Eventually, when he calms down and Rick Grimes - that's the name of the man who sentenced his brother to death. Rick Grimes - he’s crouched in front of him, voice rough and certain.

Between one word and another, Daryl is built of disappointment.

Rick doesn't look so pretty anymore.

* * *

From the single, unique moment he has to grab his brother disembodied hand off the concrete floor until the explosion in a Failed To Help Center, Daryl becomes built of emptiness. His whole body is a void and he just wants to be left alone. But good lord, he’s stuck with these dumb people, where half of them doesn't even know how to shot a gun and the other just keep holding morals in a tight grip.

He rolls his eyes way too often now and curses twice more than he usually does.

* * *

The day Sophia disappears is so, so hot, that Daryl feels like his balls are melting, but he tries to find a silly comfort in knowing that among the woods, the wind is somewhat cool.

The whole group is built out of stress, Carol looks like she’s grieving already, and T-Dog is bleeding to death near them. There’s honesty to god stupid fucking fights popping everywhere, but Daryl has his bow over his shoulders and he’s jumping the barrier to look for the little girl.

Fuck. The. Group. They can’t seem to get their shit together.

He walks in extreme silence, eyes fixed on the ground searching for tracks.

What he finds first is Rick - a desperate, lost in the middle of the woods Rick. His electric, gentle storming blue eyes are snapping all around the place, trying so hard to see the whole forest with just a single look. A disgusting shade of red forming under his wide eyes. He’s been crying.

He _is_ crying.

“C’mon,” Daryl catches himself saying, a hand at the small of Rick’s back to push him forward. “I’ll help you find her.”

Rick nods. He’s so damn silent in a strange way, like Daryl would never have thought him to be. He’s accustomed to hear Rick talking without a stop, always joking with his old partner or telling stories non-stop to his son as if he wants to record memories in another mind. In case he forgets. In case something happens.

If Daryl could say what the man looks like he’s built of at the moment, he would lose hours thinking of a proper word.

All, in reality, Rick looks just broken.

\---

No, scratch that. That’s how he looks when his son is shot.

\---

Fuck. He looks like that too when he has to shoot Sophia's dead, moving body.

\---

(Daryl also gets shot too, in the head. He wonders if Rick looked that broken for him. _Pff, keep dreaming baby bro. Keep dreaming._ )

\---

Rick is beautiful again by the time he invites Daryl to come near their camp. That’s just it, the moment he realizes he's in trouble again.

* * *

By the time they lost the farm, he’s back at being built of emptiness.

Lori is pregnant. Shane is dead. They lost good people. They are homeless again. Rick is more silent than him these days, and that’s something that creeps Daryl out in such inexplicable ways. Everything is out of control, they are in a spiral to god-knows-where, but the group is a giant married thing now - together for the better and for worse.

They find a prison after months and months and months, which makes Daryl’s built on hope for the first time in his whole damn life. They have tons of food, got rid of those psychos who were living in their new home.

The first week is like pure golden sun, bathing them 24/7. Daryl becomes built on a lot more things, too. He can feel a little pillar of actual happiness in his spine.

And when Rick kisses him-

Christ.

\---

“Shh. It’s alright.”

“What? Didn’t say shit.”

“You’re not as quiet as you think you are. Your eyes say a million.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m serious.”

“Sure, Mr. Officer.”

“I’m gonna try again. Okay, Daryl?”

And his pathetic self just whimpers and nods.

“Good. Close your eyes for me, sweetheart.”

Even if it's dark under his eyelids, he feels like he can see all the colors in the world.

Like he said. Pathetic.

\---

There are days he forgets about it, in the prison - that another shoe can always drop.

Rick and the rest of his makeshift family know about some things, but all they ever saw in him is the whole damaged piece of shit he is now - body ripped open and ugly sewed back together, mind and soul probably broken but still stable, a constant non-normal, although always the fucking same. Everyone who knew him from before the world ended is dead and burned to the ground. Well, for him it was always the end of the world, every single fucking day, ever since he was old enough to understand how things really are.

After Lori, they all start to lose their minds.

And he finds Merle and he los-

When Rick kisses him the second time-

(He still has trouble acknowledging if the first did actually happen, he doesn’t remember for sure. He thinks he felt the taste of Rick’s tongue, the tingling of his beard against his mouth at the same time he watched the man collapsed to the ground, his kid pale as a ghost, Maggie holding a newborn baby.)

When Rick kisses him the second time is right after he killed his brother. Rick is there, pacing in the front gates, one hand tight in his hair and the other on his gun. He’s walking from one side to another, just about to make a hole in the dirt.

Daryl is the one who’s broken now.

Rick tries to pick up his pieces to build anything back together again. Instead, he only manages to keep the sharp edges pointing outside - he’s the one to get hurt the most in them anyway, by Daryl’s words and wild behavior. But he still kisses him on the lips, his neck, his collarbone, his chest. Down, down, down.

Maybe Rick is fucking bleeding at the end, but like hell it stops him from making love to Daryl Dixon.

\---

But it happened only once, this love thing.

After that, they begun fuck a damn lot - in the woods, far away cells, the watchtower. The backseat of their car during a supply run or in some old bed in an abandoned house. Daryl lets Rick fuck him standing, from behind, up random tables or against the cold tiles of dirty bathrooms. Sometimes on all fours. He likes best when he gets to ride Rick’s dick. He also fucking enjoys those times he’s the one to fuck Rick.

Daryl feels like Rick is trying to build him through pleasure. He thinks it's working.

“And if we must live, sweetheart,” Rick says in his ear some rainy night. He’s too damn exhausted to hear the rest. Fucking and hunting and fighting both living and dead, he just wants to sleep, but Rick keeps talking. Daryl knows because he feels the vibration against his back.

When he wakes up, Daryl kisses all Rick’s metaphorical bleeding cuts and the real ones, too.

* * *

They lost Carol.

They lost Hershel.

They lost the prison.

He lost Michonne and Maggie and Glenn and Bob and Sasha and Tyreese and Judith and Carl and Rick.

He lost Beth a little after.

Daryl wants so badly to lose himself too.

Later, he finds Michonne and Carl and Rick. He still feels that way.

(Daryl wishes he knew what number this kiss is. They are sitting against a blue car and Rick is covered in blood from head to toe. Carl is fine. No, he will be fine, he’ll make damn sure of it. Michonne is good too. Not completely, but it’s good for now. Rick leans in and presses their lips together. Then stays that way, simply sucking his bottom lip, doing nothing more than that. It’s okay. Later, so much later, he lets Rick’s head nudge into his neck. He sleeps a little this way. It’s okay too.)

\---

They are locked in a fucking train car waiting for the crazy ass psycho people to come eat them. Inside is dark and hot and cold and there is not enough air for all of them. He spends a lot of time with eyes closed, back against the metal to feel whatever he can.

Rick catches up with his paranoia and starts to stand beside him. No words, just his hand rubbing softly into the skin of Daryl’s back. During nights, he whispers that stuff again. “And if we must live, sweetheart-”

Daryl still can’t hear the rest.

\---

They fight their way out that hell hole.

Carol is back. Judith and Tyreese, too.

They find a church which comes with a coward preacher named Gabriel, like the archangel. Not in this order of events, but in that order of importance.

Daryl is built of raw instinct these days. Fighting and hunting and protecting. He’ll do anything, anything to keep them together again. Nothing good comes to them being apart.

“And if we must live,-”

\---

Some days he’s built of tiredness, exhaustion; especially after Beth. And Tyreese.

He wants nothing more than sleep.

The other kind of sleep.

(Rick stops kissing him after he saw the burned marks in his hands. He’s holding Judith against his chest even when his arms tremble so fucking much, that Daryl reaches to picks Little Asskickers. Rick takes a step back. That's the worse thing someone ever did to him.

“Together, right?” the man asks, keeping the distance between them. His eyes are looking dangerously like that day in the forest when Sophia disappeared. Daryl doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but it sounds like a damn stupid question to him anyway.

“Yeah, together.”)

* * *

Alexandria is the kind of place Merle planned to rob into blindness before the end of the world. They've been here for four hours, and Daryl can easily point out who’d die first if something happened, if they needed to take the place.

The suburban houses and quiet streets, people running and talking and looking at them as if they were part of a circus. He hates it with all the straight in his bones, but Carl and Judith deserve this more than anyone in the group. Carol and Rick need to stop and breathe, lay in a bed and just sleep. The rest just has to keep their heads up. It's not arrogance, it's that they know how things really are, outside their gates.

On their first day, Daryl is built and deconstructed and built again so many times that he fears he’ll stay forever in pieces.

During the interview he is mistrust. During ‘knowing the neighborhood’ he's indifference. When he sees Jessie the first time he's fear, maybe? No. Envy? No. He doesn’t know how to name it, but it's something that weighs and hurts. And when he sees the house full and everyone arranging to sleep in the same space, he’s built with the promise of a future. Not for him, but for the others, and that's what really matters.

\----

Shit happens.

People happen.

Walkers happen.

It's the end of the world every day of the week.

Then Paul Rovia also happens and Daryl is kinda scared of hoping again.

\---

“What is the end of that thing you’re always saying?”

“What thing?”

“And if we must live, sweetheart.”

“Daryl Dixon, you have not been paying attention to me? How can we keep on like this, if you don’t even listen to me anymore?”

“Shut up, man.”

“But I thought you wanted me to talk.”

“And I fucking regret it already. C’mon, ain’t you gonna fuck me, or what?”

Rick laughs at that, head thrown back and everything. He keeps smiling during all their-

“And it’s called lovemaking, thank you very much.”

“Whatever, Grimes.”

\----

A bunch of weird people named Negan happens, too.

Maggie and her baby.

Abraham.

Glenn.

Then total darkness.

* * *

He feels like he's built like a Dixon.

He doesn’t talk about it.

* * *

Paul gets him out and he can’t face Maggie even if his chest hurt on how much he wants to. His days in Hilltop are tedious, even when his insides burn with anxiety. The tic tac of a bomb is getting faster. The saviors come and go, Maggie hugs him. They cry. Life goes on for those who stayed here.

The day that the gates open and he sees Rick-

When the gates of the Kingdom close and he-

He’s back at being built of flesh and bones.

\---

He remembers the lost words after he visits Carol and lies to her. For a second he considers returning and telling her the whole thing.

He punches Rick in the face when he sees him again. Then he kisses his split lip, repeats the phrase back at Rick.

“We’re going to war, Dare.”

“Together, right?”

“Yeah. Because if we must-”

\---

They march their way inside the Sanctuary as if they were hurricane and thunderstorm - pure, cruel, natural destruction. Shoulders touching and synchronized steps. He has his bow in hand, cleaning their path. Rick’s colt is searching for someone specific.

“And if we must live, sweetheart,” Rick said once. Time and time again. “We’ll do it together.”

Nowadays Daryl’s built of metal.

(They‘ve already won.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr - prusfockers.
> 
> As always, kudos, comments, critics and random chat are always welcome, just remember to be nice folks. Thanks for reading this babe :)


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